To Melt a Warrior's Heart
by Sofia Volpina
Summary: Set after Kid Buu saga. When Assur attacks the Earth, Vegeta is determined to stop him at all cost. A few weeks after the hard-won battle, Vegeta is still recovering and is in quite some pain when he wakes up to find four-year-old Bra overly-adorably worrying about him. A badly injured Vegeta plays it tough for Bra and his pride. CANON characters. Enjoy & Review!


_Set after the Kid Buu Saga. _

_When Assur attacks the Earth, Vegeta is determined to stop him at all cost. He ultimately finds the strength to defeat the demon, but the battle leaves him barely clinging to life. Some weeks later, in a somewhat more stable state, but still in the worst of wear, Vegeta wakes up to find a certain half-saiyan cutie-pie begging him to get better, this is a short story about a badly injured Vegeta playing it tough for his pride and his four-year-old daughter, Bra._

_CANON - all characters stick closely to their original traits from the DBZ series._

_Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ or any of the characters._

_Enjoy & Review!_

* * *

**- To Melt a Warrior's Heart -**

The first thing he took in as his eyes cracked open was the dim light coming from the other room. It only served to worsen the splintering headache he had just woken up to; he grunted and closed his eyes again. Slowly, he lifted one arm bringing the hand to his forehead, gently covering his eyes. His body was broken, pain surged violently through every fiber. In an attempt to distract his mind, Vegeta opened his eyes once more to observe the surroundings, trying but failing to ignore the light.

It was the same bed in the improvised but well-equipped hospital room at Capsule Corp that he was lying in and some sort of low chatter was slightly audible from behind the nursery's closed door. He tried to distinguish the voices, but the stabbing sensation throbbing against his ribcage and his still shaky grip on consciousness kept his mind from focusing on such fine details.

Vegeta raised the hand half-covering his eyes a few inches above his head to study the bandages around it. They were wrapped from above the wrist up to his knuckles. He smirked inwardly, '_pretty sleek,'_ he thought to himself, noticing the resemblance with boxing bandages.

It was surprising how well his left hand and forearm had recovered; they had sustained quite some damage when the saiyan warrior had held off Assur's final Hakai Chiru attack. It was hurting and was somewhat stiff but at least half-way functional and bearable to Vegeta, unlike his right shoulder, which had been lanced through in battle and was now putting him through hell.

The sickening image of the spike pit, created by Assur in battlefield, flashed before Vegeta's eyes. He grunted in anger, scorning his own slackness. When the monster used the momentum of Vegeta's missed cross to throw the sayian on his back in mid-air and sent him crashing towards earth with a ki blast, that damn pit had not for a second crossed Vegeta's mind. All the less had he considered me might be diving straight towards it. Maybe he could have stopped the free-fall if he hadn't been so foolish to obliterate the battle terrain. Excruciating pain tore his right shoulder as one of the granite spikes impaled it, splintering bones and hacking up flesh. He didn't even feel his back hit the ground. Nor did he hear the heart-wrenching cry of agony cracking the air. If only he hadn't been so heedless...

Trying to pull his thoughts away from the raw wound, he noticed something fussing to his left. He turned his head wearily to inspect the source of the sound, blinking a couple of times to dissipate the white spots, which the motion had sent dancing across his vision. Four-year-old Bra was standing next to Vegeta's bed, holding her hands balled into fists, pressed against her chest and fixing her father with strikingly sad eyes. At the sight of her, Vegeta's face, hardened with the pain he was in, immediately mildened, if only just slightly.

"Daddy… I don't want you to die!" the girl said with all her being as if the energy of her words alone would have the strength to decide over her father's state. "Please!"

Vegeta was baffled; he looked at her for a couple more moments as if trying to understand what was happening, then frowned. "Who told you this nonsense?" he growled with casual authority in his voice, sounding more coarse than he had expected.

The girl didn't reply; she looked at him with the same pleading eyes.

Vegeta frowned deeper and snarled half in annoyance, half in resignation with what he was about to do. He moved his left hand over his upper body to inspect how the right shoulder and upper arm, the most critical injuries, were bandaged. His hand hovered ever so slightly over the wraps across his chest, avoiding touching the wounded spot. He was grateful to ascertain that everything was properly held in place, the bandages running around the shoulder and arm down to just below the elbow and then wrapped around his chest and upper abdomen to keep the arm immobile along his body. The only thing he had to do was hold his elbow flexed with the forearm across his stomach.

He adjusted his left hand against the bed for support and wearily pushed himself into an upright position with the good arm only.

A hoarse growl escaped his throat as pain erupted in the wounded shoulder. Immediately, Vegeta clenched his jaw so tightly he wondered if his teeth could break. He leaned forward almost dubbing over in pain, clutching his injured arm, trying to supress the vivid sensation of flesh and bones being slashed through with a saw.

After a few minutes or maybe only mere seconds of heavy panting, he couldn't really tell how long it had been, Vegeta managed to somewhat steady his breath. When he felt he could rise his head without passing out, the saiyan turned towards the left side of the bed, careful not to further jostle his injury.

He laid his feet on the floor and remained sitting on the edge of the bed for a couple of moments. The simple effort of sitting up had strained him to the verge of collapse. The surroundings were turning increasingly blurry, his head was getting too heavy to hold up straight, and some odd sentiment that the room was reeling noisily crept into his ears; before he knew it, he was struggling to stay conscious.

He leaned forward slowly, prompting the elbow of his good arm against his knee for support. Vegeta was breathing raspy, heavy with pain; maybe it hadn't been such a brilliant idea to try to get up after all. Again, the warrior grit his teeth biting back a groan. He was so, so tired of hurting! There was almost nothing he could remember from the past weeks besides the bone-splintering pain throbbing with every heartbeat, unconsciousness had done nothing to spare him from that feeling; drifting in and out of awareness, he could barely comprehend anything else besides the crude pain and the visceral drive to not succumb to it._  
_

There was no doubt that his condition had improved; he could remember hardly being able to lift his arm a few days ago, let alone sit up. Still, it was wearing him down beyond exhaustion. It was hard to tell whether it was the fever, or the pain, or maybe both of them combined, that was driving him on the verge of unconsciousness again.

Careful, he brought his left hand to his wounded shoulder, his face scrunched even further _'Damn you, Kakarott'_ he thought to himself, overwhelmed by the violent pangs ripping through his shoulder and arm. His chest shuddered slightly with the pain he was suppressing. He wasn't blaming him, it had been his decision alone to pull that third-class saiyan's sorry ass out of death's grip, regardless what it may cost, regardless of his own mangled shoulder. He couldn't afford losing the only half-decent sparring partner; that, he would tell himself. He wasn't blaming him; but somehow, trashing that idiot's ineptitude was the only thing Vegeta could do to ease the frustration with his own deplorable condition.

_'At least if he'd have the courtesy to never bring it up,' _Vegeta's thoughts trailed of while he tried to discern whether the sound that had just added to the ringing in his ears was someone sniffling or someone being dragged across the floor. He settled for sniffle; some oddly muffled while at the same time high-pitched humming was accompanying it, only it wasn't humming, it was sobbing. Someone was definitely sobbing.

_'Bra!'_ He had forgotten all about her. Pushing all thoughts of injuries aside, he opened his eyes to see his daughter looking at him more frightened than a chased deer, with tears streaming down her face and nose all red from crying. She had her arms crossed over her chest, almost as if hugging herself, her fingers grabbing tightly at the sleeves of her bright-pink sweater.

Vegeta was perplexed. He mentally cursed himself for having such a rough time understanding children; he had thought getting up would do something to make himself look less pathetic, ergo less prone to dying to her.

He frowned in confusion. "Why are you crying now?" he sounded more tired than he had intended to, despite the disdainful tone he had pushed into his voice.

"You hurt, daddy" was all she said.

Vegeta frowned deeper in annoyance and forced himself to straighten his back, adjusting into a more dignifying position, regardless of the splintering throes it sent racing up his spine.

"I am a Saiyan warrior," he said proudly and continued "I don't…" but then cut himself off… he saw Bra looking at him with new tears welling up in her eyes. It was becoming quite obvious to Vegeta that she wouldn't be impressed by the sayjian pride dictating that a warrior must endure anything without complaint.

Vegeta's frown mildened; through all the pain he was in, he could swear he felt his heart cringe at the sight of his daughter crying over him. He felt an incredibly strong, almost instinctual urge to calm her at any cost. He looked at her for a second as if trying to understand the situation.

"I'm not hurting," he then said unusually soft, Bra stared at him blankly, her mouth almost trembling announcing another crying fit. Vegeta mentally kicked himself for the stupidity of what he was about to say.

"After a fight, I have to sleep to regain strength. Now, I've slept so much that my arms and legs feel really numb. Sore even." he continued, feeling embarrassed for the ridiculously dumb explanation he had just come up with. Had he not been so pale from exhaustion, Vegeta certainly would have blushed with shame.

But it seemed to have worked. Bra looked at him with interest so he trailed off "It will take a while to adjust, but I am only a bit sore, no pain." Vegeta saw his daughter's tears beginning to subside.

She then moved closer to him and lifted her head to meet his eyes before determinately asking "Promise?"

Vegeta's eyes hovered over her for a moment, there was something about this little girl that made his entire world melt with a single gesture of hers. "Of course." He lied in a reassuring tone.

Bra smiled content; a large goofy grin spread across her face, making the few tears she had been holding back roll down her cheeks. She wiped her nose clumsily with the back of her palm and grabbed Vegeta's index finger with both her hands.

Vegeta's shoulder hurt so badly it was nauseating and with every heart beat it would pulsate bolts of pain, radiating from his collarbone, up through his jaw and into his temple. He was exhausted with pain to the point that he could barely think straight. Still, there was something about those little hands holding on to his finger for dear life, something about the goofy grin on his daughter's face that made Vegeta sketch back a slight, even if weary, smile of happiness.

"Come on, enough questions. Let's get you to your mother. Nag HER if you have to!" He said, forcing a dismissive tone into his voice, and stretched his left arm out signalling the little girl to hop on.

The girl burst into a laughter of happiness and immediately climbed on the bed, grabbing on to her father's left side like a baby koala. A barely noticeable grimace of pain flashed across Vegeta's face as Bra wrapped her arms (as much as she could, which wasn't much really) around him. He put his good arm around his daughter, adjusting it so that she was sitting on his forearm, on his left side. The girl put one hand behind his neck and laid her head affectionately against his chest. Vegeta almost scoffed disdainfully at the overdose of sweetness and at the realisation that he had lost count of the number of times he had felt his heart melt that evening. He grit his teeth as he pushed himself up and went towards the door, carrying Bra and doing his best to ignore the slight limp in his leg.

* * *

**_Author notes_**

**_All reviews are most welcome!_**

**_I even like the one-sentence reviews (I see some veteran authors bash them, but I'm still a newbie, so that's not the case for me). However, I absolutely love constructive criticism! _**

**_With this story, sometimes, I have the impression it's pretty good for a one-shot, other times, I find it downright mediocre. Reviews should help me settle this dilemma. Don't be afraid to tell me if you find it mediocre, I take criticism well. I see it as a way to improve, and my self-esteem does not depend on my fanfic writing skills; not in the slightest. So, go ahead, be as honest as you can. Just keep it constructive.  
_**

**_...And now, some explanations to the background of the story..._**

**_1) ASSUR _**_is a former apprentice of the Eastern Supreme Kai and by far his most powerful one. (The Eastern Supreme Kai appears in the English dubbed Buu Saga as simply 'Supreme Kai'. That's because the other four Supreme Kais were killed by Buu and so he was the only one left. So he just dropped the 'Eastern' part. J) _

_Assur was slowly growing fascinated with his own power; this worried the five Supreme Kais, who feared that the sheer amount of power would corrupt the young apprentice's soul. They also believed that such concentration of power risks overthrowing the balance of the Universe, and should thus not be encouraged or nurtured. Taking the advice of the other four, the Eastern Supreme Kai sent Assur away and forbid him to ever recommence training. _

_It was a tough decision and it left the Eastern Supreme Kai hear-broken, as he had been the one to raise Assur and had grown fond of him as if he were his own son. _

_Assur however, never forgave the Supreme Kai for what he considered to be the most blatant betrayal. As the years went by, he grew bitter with sorrow and hatred, finding consolation only in the immensity of his own strength. He spent the centuries to come roaming the galaxy, looking for nothing more than ways to increase his power and destroy all balance between destruction and creation that the Kais ever tried to uphold. And since he had no gift of creation, he found destruction was his only way. _

**_2) HAKAI CHIRU _**_is Assur's most powerful attack. As a pupil of the Supreme Kai, he learned the Genki Dharma, just as Son Goku did from King Kai. As his heart was consumed with bitterness, he reached the point where he could no longer access the origin Ki which comprised the essence of heaven and earth and thus, was left without access to the technique of Genki Dharma. His mind had become too clouded with vengeance to see that his darkened soul alone had cut him off access to the supreme energy. Instead he blamed it on the Kais; he cursed them for having condemned him to such petty faith and swore to reclaim what he considered to be rightfully his. For hundreds of years he roved the universe obsessed with regaining the power he had lost along with his soul, until one day, he mastered a technique more powerful than he could have ever dreamed of, the Hakai Chiru._

_Assur's ultimate attack is antagonistic to the Genki Dharma: while for the Genki Dharma attack to be formed, the beings of the universe freely contribute with some of their energy, the Hakai Chiru forcefully robs them of most of their vital ki. As a result, it can build up considerably more energy than the former technique. Hakai Chiru is composed of the destructive force of the universe._

**_3) NO MORE SENZU BEANS?_**_ If you were wondering why Vegeta doesn't just take the easy way out and grab a Senzu Bean… Well… No senzu beans, guys! Our fighters have eaten them all up in the Assur Saga and there won't be any more beans until May and that's quite a while away from when the action of this chapter is taking place, namely October. 'Why May?' you might ask... Well, because that's when the Senzu Stock makes new beans. :))_


End file.
